China is trying to get German technologies

Berlin, Frankfurt Despite ever stricter regulations, China is getting more and more of the coveted German technology. The People’s Republic is circumventing Beijing’s stricter controls by relying increasingly on licensing models rather than corporate takeovers in order to continue acquiring German know-how in the future, experts explained to Handelsblatt.

German licensing income from China more than tripled in 2022 compared to 2014, and increased by about half from 2020 to 2022 alone. This is shown by an analysis by the German Economic Institute (IW), which is available exclusively to Handelsblatt. It’s up in the air “whether China has opened up a new path for problematic technology transfer,” says Juergen Mattis, a researcher at The Washington Institute. When asked to what extent this knowledge transfer is being controlled, a spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of Economics said: Look at the possibilities here.